story

Back to Source Coaching is an initiative of like-minded individuals, who have come together to support themselves and others, to take a deep dive to personal mastery. With a strong belief that wherever there is Mastery, Coaching is happening, wherever there is Coaching, personal Mastery is a natural outcome.

Backstory

Amrita is my partner from another lifetime. We have been working together since she and I both started working. We are each other’s professional spouse.

After Amrita sold The Little Company she stumbled upon coaching. I had also just finished my expressive and creative arts therapy course and we were both discovering therapeutic living. She had joined an organisational development firm and was co-facilitating a coach training program with Peter J Reding.

She insisted I do the course. I refused. She persisted. I refused. She went ahead and paid up for my participation. She was relentless. So I went along, grumbling. Now, Amrita is a brilliant marketer who can sell a comb to a bald man!

Anyways, the course had an activity where participants are taken through a self-discovery process where they articulate their authentic selves. I identified myself as compost. I had just discovered composting and was inspired by sustainable living and every time I closed my eyes, I imagined myself on a farm, growing my own food, cows grazing, and me composting (of course there is wifi and OTT content and tons of design work to do in my imaginal world). So in my articulation, I wrote that I was compost – that provided nurturance, anchorage and growth.

A few months later, Amrita decided to start a coaching company under the Back to Source brand name, merging her learnings from her spiritual practice and coaching. She had just read Elif Shafak’s The Forty Rules of Love and was newly introduced to the word ‘dervish’ and sent me loads of imagery with spirals and twirls and similar stuff as inspiration to design a logo. I gave her the germinating leaf design. I think it came from my own process of discovery. The compost one. To me, Amrita and I were miscible. I didn’t know where I ended and she began. My compost articulation felt synonymous with her inward journey of discovery, reaching out to the source within.

She asked for some options. I refused. She made some suggestions. I refused. I went ahead and sent her the artwork. I was relentless. So she went along, unsure. Did I mention that when I operate from a deep sense of surety, alternates are not an option. (I have also trained under the ethos of Mr. Gupta at Trikaya, where one brief had only one design – a strategy I have not had the conviction or expertise to follow except for this once).

Amrita built her own narrative around the design, weaving in her stories, infusing life, drawing the connection between the self and the absolute. Aham Brahmasmi, she would say.

To date I get enquires from people who know of Amrita and the work that she does and the brand that she embodies, asking to do a design as simplistic, minimalistic and profound as the Back to Source logo. But then, not everyone has the gumption of fulfilling their duties of being your professional spouse.